


Acts of Worship

by someonesbunny



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Extended Scene, F/M, Introspection, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25298026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonesbunny/pseuds/someonesbunny
Summary: Events of great significance are often preceded by acts that are decidedly unhistoric. For Cloud and Tifa, the resolve needed to face what might have been their last battle had been cultivated in a small guest room on an empty airship overlooking an ocean.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart & Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 14
Kudos: 93





	Acts of Worship

**Author's Note:**

> Entry for Final Heaven Discord's Endless Summer 2020 Event, loosely using the alternate prompt: "I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you."
> 
> I hope you enjoy it.

It was winter when a world-ending catastrophe was averted by a group headed by an ex-ShinRa soldier of low rank. Cloud Strife (who had once falsely claimed to be a former SOLDIER First Class) had led a small force into battle against Sephiroth, a former war hero changed into a monster. Those who knew of the details of their story often talked of the final battle and of all the conspiracies that intersected with this great cataclysm, but many had no idea about the weeks before the when each had returned to their homes to divest themselves of any remaining doubt. At this time, Cloud had given as honest a speech as he could to the members of his small group to ask them to go home to their loved ones and find the courage to keep fighting, knowing that if they couldn’t, then they at least would be in a place where they could prepare for the end quietly and unalone. Five days he had given them: the world could wait just a little longer. However, a brief homecoming was a courtesy that could not be extended to himself or his lover, Tifa Lockhart, because there was no home left for them to return to. 

Had things ended differently, the world might have forgotten the two of them. They had few photographs to remember them by, and fewer people who knew them well. No one would have known what they meant to each other, not having taken a single picture together even when they were young, but they were ready to live the rest of their days together (and they thought at the time that it was certainly only days they would ever have). It would have been easy to imagine their preparation to be laden with a sort of grief for the years they could never live out together, but in truth, the days they spent before the battle were the lightest they had ever known. These moments were small and insignificant by any measure like learning the scent of her hair after she bathed, or knowing the roughness of his palms where he gripped the hilt of his sword, and each was a reminder that events of such significance are often preceded by the decidedly unhistoric. For Cloud and Tifa, the resolve needed to face what might have been their last battle had been cultivated in a small guest room on an empty airship overlooking an ocean. 

They had passed the time during this week as regularly as any day, except that during this time they finally acknowledged that they had always wanted to bridge the gap between themselves. In the day, they would sometimes busy themselves with small activities like cooking, or reading, or talking, as if to pretend that the world wasn’t ending at all, and were happy to do so as long as they did it together. They stole kisses some afternoons, or held each other as they watched the ebb of the tide in the distant shoreline. The nights were for learning about each other, for lovemaking in the dark of the guest room they had claimed for themselves. Time, however, was catching up and this afternoon was their last before tomorrow, when they would need to face the world again, hopefully renewed in their convictions. 

Tifa had cooked an early supper, an old stew recipe she remembered from Nibelheim. Everyone had their own version of it, so Tifa’s was from an old cookbook that her mother put together when she was still young, that she read in her youth thinking that this was just another way to impress Cloud whenever it was that he returned home. Cloud, being a boy from the mountains, knew little more than putting things over fire, and even then he wasn’t sure he did this well. So he loomed in the kitchen with her, and though he crowded her at times, she let him stand close as she moved about. 

Dishes were set in the empty canteen of the airship where they ate together. He sat next to her because they found that it was more comfortable for them to feel each other's bare arms on each other than it was to watch each other from across the table. 

“Do you want more juice?” she asked as she poured herself another glass.

He nodded to her and she poured more into his mug with a small smile on her lips, humming faintly, bobbing her head gently to a song he didn’t know. It was moments like this when he felt like kissing her on the cheek, but his mouth was slick with sauce and while he had a boyishness in him that egged him on to do so, he decided against his impulse. 

“Do you want some of my carrots?” Cloud asked her. 

“What?”

“Carrots.”

“Eat them, Cloud,” she told him, her tone dry but expression amused, “Get used to it. I’m cooking healthy for us from now on.”

He grumbled, but ate them all the same. 

When he thought about days like today, it always struck him as strange that their interactions were still somewhat child-like. He had always imagined that an adult relationship required the performance of a certain maturity, but he could not imagine being as happy as he was while acting as stoically as he used to. Despite the light and heady sensation of their affections, his heart remained serious, sobered in his belief that if an accounting could ever be made, nothing he could offer could ever repay her for all that she had given him. 

“Do you like it?” Tifa said, mumbling the words from the corner of her mouth.

“It tastes like my mom’s.”

“Is that... good?”

“Yeah. But the stew thing in Nibelheim wasn’t really my thing. I liked it when we grilled fish from the river.”

“You mean when you burnt the fish from the river. You could tell me you don’t like it, you know. I’ll just make something else.”

“No, I like your cooking. Just, less vegetables next time.” 

“Healthy, remember?” Tifa said as she laughed and leaned into him playfully, then reached for his hand and squeezed it. 

Touching each other came more easily now, even in less suggestive contexts - her chin on his shoulder, or their hands intertwined - each stroke and caress owing itself to each one that came before. It was a debt owed even to those which were awkward and unrefined; or perhaps it was owed mostly to these because they made clear all the things they didn’t know that they wished to know about each other. 

He remembered that on the first day of what they thought were their last days, they had spoken on the cliffs and she told him that: “Words aren’t the only way to tell people what you’re thinking.” 

That he had always loved her was no secret to her now, but he knew she was right: words could never be enough. It could never be enough for him to say he thought she was beautiful, because if he could speak to the fullness of what he felt, he might have described something more akin to the feeling of the first full breath drawn by a castaway who found himself on shore with the sun on his face. 

He remembered how she laughed softly the first time he kissed her, unable to contain the excitement fluttering up from her chest. 

And they both sometimes thought back on their first night together, though they never discussed it with each other. In hindsight, they both seemed to believe that it was better that neither of them could see in that room that night. Cloud was unsure and unsteady at the thought of her simply looking at him, much less now that she was looking at him naked; while Tifa was still convinced at the hideousness of her scarred body. Cloud remembered that he had been hesitant in his every action as at the time he had no real knowledge of navigating a woman; and Tifa remembered wincing into his neck, balling her hands into fists at his every reckless thrust. She held her breath for most of the night as it had been uncomfortable, but she did not know what she was meant to feel except for her certainty that she did love him, so she bit into his shoulder to silence herself - though some sighs escaped her lips, his ears were still untrained to know the difference between her pleasure and her pain. 

He was not completely ignorant of course, having noticed that while they held each other that night, she trembled against him without speaking. She squirmed ever so slightly, but their nakedness made him keenly aware of the movement of her skin on his. He had once been afraid to touch her, fearing that she might have broken in two, and now he frowned at the thought that even in matters of intimacy he had little knowledge of how to be gentle with her. 

He had frowned and said: “I’m sorry - I wanted it to be good for you.”

And he remembered she shook her head against his shoulder in soft protest and whispered: “I’m happy, Cloud.”

There was a clattering on her plate as she turned to face him. 

“Hey,” she called to him with her head cocked to the side, “You okay? You drifted off for a second.”

“Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.” 

“About?”

He shifted his gaze towards his food first, not wanting to discuss where his mind had wandered knowing how shy she could be. He had wondered about other things, however, which he felt might have been a more appropriate discussion for their meal: about growing up together; about her father and all the blessings that could never be asked from him now. 

“I guess,” he began with some apprehension, “I kinda wondered what it would be like if I had to talk to your dad about us…”

“Ah…”

He reeled slightly at her terse response, thinking that it brought up painful memories, while she was just taken aback at the implication. He really was a country boy, she thought, grown with old world values. She began to think that if he never left, he may have gone on courting her in secret: slinking about in the dark of night, speaking sweet words that were usually foreign to the lips of rough boys like him - softened for her, whispered so only she could hear - punctuated on the long afternoons with distant glances peppered with longing. Maybe one day in the years to come when he had finally built up the courage, he would have asked her father for the blessings she was sure he could never completely give. She looked at him in her periphery as he seemed to bite his cheek nervously and she wondered if he would always be this boyish and sweet. 

“Sorry… for bringing that up.”

“Don’t be. It’s cute you’d think of that,” she said as she wound her arm around his, “Papa… well, you know what he’s like - he would have given you trouble.”

“I figured.” 

“He wouldn't have been able to stop me, though.”

“You sure you wouldn’t have wanted him to?”

“Cloud…”

“I know, I know. I’m just teasing. I was a little rough back then, is all.”

“Well... I would tell him that you're a good boy, even if you were always fighting the other boys.”

“Was I really that bad?” he asked with an awkward chuckle. 

“A little. You're lucky you were cute.”

“‘Were’? So, I'm not cute anymore?”

“You're handsome now.”

He smiled and blushed from the tips of his ears. 

It was easy to please him, or at least it was for her. The smallest of compliments would suffice as long as it reminded him of what she felt. She did this as often as she could but she always seemed unready to be rewarded with his smile; and whenever he smiled, she found herself wanting to kiss him, but she knew what they were like when they were alone and thought better of it. She turned away, though she didn’t really want to, and began to tidy up. 

“Help me, um, clean,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice. 

The plates rattled as she gathered them up. Tifa walked them to the kitchen sink as Cloud gathered the rest of the glasses, utensils, and the empty pot. Cloud brought the rest and placed them on the counter as Tifa ran the water over them, passing him a dishcloth as she did. 

“You dry, I’ll wash,” she told him. 

“As always.”

Soapy sponge in hand, she began to scrub a plate in hand and he stood next to her waiting. 

She had wondered similarly about his mother. She had been tough, having raised such a stubborn boy on her own, so perhaps the thought had been a little intimidating. She could be kind, as far as Tifa could remember, but she could be foul-tempered as well (at least, for what she recalled about the arguments she’s had with various townsfolk at market, not to mention arguments with her father, of all people). 

“Hey Cloud?”

“Hm?”

“What about your mom?”

“What about her?”

“Kinda feel like she wouldn’t have liked me – but maybe it's because you were her baby – she probably didn't like any of the girls in town.”

“Why would you think that?”

“She’d want someone better for you,” her eyes were downcast as she spoke, staring at the plates in the sink as she scrubbed.

“How could anyone… what do you mean better?”

“You know, refined and stuff. Not…” she looked up at Cloud then and shrugged, “... not like me.”

“Tifa…”

“Well, I’m not. I’ve never been that kind of girl.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It might have.”

“Not to me.”

She gasped, not expecting such confidence in his words.

“W-well,” she tried to continue, surprise evident in her voice, “I’m not talking about you. It's your mother that would have been the judge of that.”

“And I’m telling you, she would have warmed up... and if you're not sure, you could have just cooked that stew again and you would have had her charmed.”

“Everyone from Nibelheim has a recipe for that,” she said dryly as she passed Cloud a washed plate. 

“Okay, then I would tell her that you took care of me and that you still take care of me.”

“You take care of me, too.”

“I could do better,” he said as he shook his head, his eyes on the plate he was drying.

“I don’t need you to do better. I guess… just don’t leave me… and maybe, just be sweet to me sometimes.”

“Not all the time?” 

“You’re a moody guy, you know?” 

“So?”

“So sweet sometimes is enough.” 

Cloud put the plate down on the counter as Tifa continued washing, and placed his arms around her, pulling her into him from behind. 

“C-Cloud?” she mumbled with a stutter, surprised at the closeness. 

He placed his face in the crook of her neck and mumbled against her: “What if I can be better?” 

She dropped the plate in her hand with a bang reverberating in the steel of the sink and she took hold of the countertop for balance. His hands began to wander and her knees began to buckle. They were different together and different too from how they were only days before. He was more forward now and so was she, as she now understood the depth of her want. These changes were what she had always hoped for, but the price of change was time - time still to be together, to pretend that it would always be like this. Every touch had been a blessing. It had all felt like a dream. 

He kissed her neck and her mind was filled with memories of being enveloped by him.

She remembered a night when she begged him to tell her what he had done, having been surprised by how good he made her feel. 

“What are you doing to me?” she whimpered, breathing through her words. 

It wasn't that she felt no pleasure on their other nights together, but she was still learning and so was her body. She thought that this had to have been the first time that she had ever felt anything of such intensity because the words poured from her mouth so quickly and easily as if a great cup filled to the brim with her thoughts had been tipped and all at once the world was awash with them. Once, she had believed that there could be nothing more honest than fighting, until this moment when she spoke the words her body cried out and violence could no longer be more honest than softness. 

“Please, I want to kiss,” she pleaded, frustration sharp in her voice.

She remembered his smile, illuminated by the light pouring through the slatted blinds of the window. There was mischief in his eyes as he chose then not to oblige her and it frustrated her that he could be such a boy. She struggled against him, trying to pull him to her, but he resisted. If she had asked him about it afterward (which she often didn’t because when they weren’t in bed she was just as shy as she always was), he would have told her that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to - on the contrary, he always wanted to kiss her - but he couldn’t resist being looked at the way she looked at him then: with the eyes of someone leaving home, taking every sight to lock in their hearts to warm them on every lonely night to come.

“Please, please, be nice to me!” she called again without thought and pressed her eyes shut as she pulled on his neck, clinging by the tips of her fingers.

She remembered feeling him kiss her. If her eyes hadn’t been so tightly shut then, she would have seen that he blushed at the earnestness of her request and quickly brought himself down close to her. Tifa, already overwhelmed by sensation, was engulfed too by a fullness of affection. She threw her arms haphazardly around his neck to pull him into an embrace, pressing her lips harder against his, deep enough to bruise. She learned that with Cloud, there were times when she meant to leave a mark. 

She gripped the counter tighter as she felt his pull.

“Cloud, wait,” she said, shaking her head as if to wake herself from her thoughts, “Th-the chores, I…” 

“Tifa, Cid’s not gonna care.”

“I know, I just…” she stammered, “ I just wanted to pretend a little longer.”

“I know. I know. But I want to be together.”

“We are.”

“You know what I meant,” he said in a gruff tone, “Come to bed.”

He had said these words at sunset almost every day since they were left alone and still it managed to make her blush. He held her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. 

“Tifa, I want to -” he started again but was cut off by her hand, still damp, swiftly placed firmly on his mouth. 

Tifa frowned at him then, speaking just shy of a whisper, “Don’t say it, dummy. I… it’s embarrassing, you know?”

His eyes softened and she struggled to look at him. There was a pleading in her touch, begging for comfort, to ease worries he could never hope to cleanse. He could never be large enough to bear the whole weight of it, nor was he small enough to navigate it to its root. He might never have strength enough to make things right for her, but he knew that he would always have the courage to try. He placed his hand softly on hers, slowly peeling it away from his face and gave her a soft tug at her fingers. She pushed her face into his chest, bashful as she always was, and he felt her nod softly in his chest as she mumbled: “Okay.”

The sun was setting now behind the mountains, lighting the horizon and cutting clean outlines of the distant landscapes until the lights dwindled into a smudge of blood orange, like streaks of oil pastel. The low light shone through the windows in the hallways, marked by long pillars of shadow that grew ever longer and ever darker. A clicking of boots rang in the empty walkway, unmatched in cadence as if from an unpracticed procession, where Cloud and Tifa made their way back to their room while slowly taking in the sights they could still see in the fading of the day.

They stood in front of the door the same way they stood on the first night they shared. There was anticipation and weight to each glance, deliberateness in every movement. There was fear too as the halls darkened and the passing of time became more apparent. Cloud opened the door slowly and entered with Tifa in tow. As the door closed, they removed their shoes and placed them neatly along the wall then guided each other next to the bed. 

“Close the curtains,” Tifa said.

“No. Not tonight.”

“It’s too bright… I feel… it makes me feel exposed, you know?”

“I know.” 

“Cloud…”

“I just want to see you properly. And I guess I want you to see me too,” he said as his hands stroked her arms, “This might be the last… and I want to hold you. I want to see you.”

With how little he spoke sometimes, it was really not uncommon that he spoke with solemnity, but the weight that each word tonight felt like it was drawn from the deepest parts of him. He looked at her with his intentions emblazoned in the blue of his eyes.

She let loose a breath she forgot she was holding, feeling suddenly sure she agreed with all he said. 

“Okay… but, help me take them off,” she mumbled as she gestured to herself.

He reached out to her wordlessly and gently pulled her shirt over her head. Piece by piece, her clothes fell to the ground next to them. Her naked body seemed to glow in the fading of the half-light and always conveyed to him a certain untouchable holiness, a distance, and a chaste refusal; all of these burned away each night when she opened her arms to him, welcoming him; and only she could make him worthy. 

“Now you. Take them off.”

Cloud nodded and reached for the hem of his shirt when Tifa grabbed his hands.

“Wait. Actually, I...” she said softly, “Let me, okay?”

Cloud complied with her request and put his hands at his sides. He watched as Tifa began to pull his shirt over his head, feeling the backs of her knuckles rubbing against him. He raised his arms as she pulled it over his head and tossed it in the pile where her own clothes had landed.

Her hands inched downward along his abdomen, past his navel, along a fine trail of hair leading downward and stopped abruptly at the buckle of his trousers. She reached down to unfasten his belt and began to pull his clothes down and off his legs. Cloud hadn't moved until the garments were bunched at his ankles, and only to kick them off roughly. She looked up at him and placed her thumb on his lips and slid her hand gently across to cup his cheek with her palm. 

The sun had set completely, but light from the moon now illuminated the room. 

“Come to bed,” he said again.

They both laid down and Cloud loomed over her to look at her. She blushed from her ears and her chest, and it felt like the heat burned onto her skin from the light glow in his eyes. 

Dimly, and for the first time, he looked at her realizing that they may never grow older than this; that they might never see a wrinkle on each others' faces or the blemishes of aging, or her grey and silver hairs that he could fondle in his old, gnarled fingers. He knew there would be no other time than now to mark her into his mind one final time, so he began by stroking her hair with one hand and trailing down her neck with the other. He looked at the black hair that fell through his fingers like water and the heaving breaths that grew deeper as he moved steadily down her chest. His hands moved gently along her slender shoulder to savour the smoothness of her white skin, the strong musculature of her body drawn in sharp contrast by the moonlight from the windows and the deepening shadows in its absence. He contemplated the days they had spent together and realized that any terror he may have felt at her frailty had been for nothing, for there was nothing but strength in her, laid before him now, and she had only ever been vulnerable at his request.

His eyes had searched her and soon his lips trekked the paths that they marked. He found her stomach and traced lines between each of the moles he found there – he found two between her hip and her navel. He pressed his hand to her ribs and traced them down her sides which slid inward first and softly outward to the bone of her hip which jutted out slightly but sharply like stone burst from a gently rolling meadow. She moaned at the strokes of his thumbs that travelled from her abdomen through to the fold where her hips met her legs, the depression of flesh leading gently down and to her inner thighs. His eyes lingered there, on a modest outcropping of hair where the shadows deepened and he prostrated himself to plant slow kisses between her legs inciting sharp gasps as if each kiss was a pinprick.

“Wait, come, kiss me,” she whispered, pulling on his hair gingerly.

“I thought you wanted this.”

“I don’t know what I want...”

She pulled again more firmly, a petulant look about her face. 

He smiled at her and lifted himself closer and drew his hands back up from her hips towards her breasts and he cupped them gently with his palms. Bowing down to kiss her, he pressed himself onto her as he stroked her and gently passed his fingers on her nipples which stood erect at his first hot breath on her cheek. She moaned quietly, her trembling sighs ringing softly in his ears while her hands inched along his arms, his chest, his body.

As he had moved about her, she gazed upon him as the pale of his skin was made incandescent by the gentle light of the moon, and she saw that more than his scars, it was his youthful beauty that stained him. He was daintier than most other men with such gentle features adorning him – his soft eyes, his full lips and small, even teeth – he might have even been a prince if there had been anything princely about him; and she might have had an inkling then that this beauty might have hid those things which had truly set him apart from all others. With each pass her eyes and hands made on him, and as he dove into her to kiss her and smell her and feel her, she saw that instead of a prince, he had been built like the peasant he had always been born to be: lean, starved, and battered, with muscles designed to suffer unending labour. And it was better this way. He was too honest to be a prince, and far too kind.

He held her closer and sensed in himself a faint acknowledgement of the death that lay in wait for them bringing about a keen awareness of living – and he was set alight. There was now an otherworldly clarity to the image of her in his eyes, a stronger sweetness in her scent, and a sharpness reverberating in their caresses. He knew that he was not the only one whose senses were awakened by this knowledge with Tifa's flesh smouldering at his every touch, her body more like embers now than it had been on any other night they shared; but it was heat like the fire that took their home from them, that still burned within them; a fire that branded them so they might never find a home in anyone but each other ever again.

“Cloud,” she called to him.

“I'm here.”

Her eyes fluttered to meet his as she raised her hand to run her fingers through his soft golden hair, his face still lingering about hers. She smiled at him, though she was sure he couldn't tell from how close he was to her. She pressed her face into his neck to breathe in the cool scent of his skin (the kind of smell one might imagine on a boy from the mountains, of bitter juniper and moist cedar from the thawing of the frost in the spring) and placed a wet kiss behind his ear. 

“Lay down,” came her sultry whisper. 

She pressed her hand on his shoulder and he fell onto his back without resistance. She propped herself up to loom over him and her hair cascaded forward, crashing down onto his chest, dancing on him like brushstrokes of every word she was still waiting to say. 

“Cloud,” she whispered again, a desperate call in the dark as she threw her arms around his neck. She was overwhelmed by her emotions which had simmered in the pit of her stomach for the years since their youth, bubbling up now, boiling, like brew in a cauldron whose fire was stoked too hot. She threw her leg over his waist, straddling him, reaching down gently, where he stiffened in her hand, and a breath left her lungs as she pressed him into her.

“Tifa, wait,” a weak plea slipped under his breath, “Let me take care of you.”

“No, I don’t… I don’t need that,” Tifa answered with shallow breaths between her words, “I don't want to be apart.”

She brought herself down and pressed against him, her breasts against his chest and her mouth on his ear so he could hear her desperation with every rock and every stroke of her hips, pushing him deeper. He placed his hands on her hips first with the eagerness of a boy before holding himself back and trailing her back with his fingertips, allowing her to move about him as she pleased. His skin was radiating with warmth and his muscle quivered beneath the surface. She held onto his shoulder leaning against him, her cheek against his ear and her eyes blinded by the pillow beneath his head. 

Unable to hold himself any longer, he grabbed her and rolled her to her back as if capsizing her, engulfing her. He moaned against her neck and her chest, unable to decide where he wished to move next, leaving pink marks on her white skin as if it was scalded by the wet of his kisses; and with each, she called his name over and over again like a hymn, the ecstasy in her voice laced with the grief of those moments when his kisses had parted from her. Their bodies burned, their sweat meeting in what little space they still had between them, and the mingling of their scents was as soft as autumn rain. He heaved over top her, thrusting his hips into hers, pushing desperately as if willing their bodies into an impossible oneness.

Their eyes were trained on each others’ faces and ears on every breath and gasp, their trembling voices answering each other, the chorus of death-rattles of the passing moments. She pulled him into her, muscles tightening, her legs pulling him close to her. With a familiar warmth and a tingling on their spines, their moans were louder and as their lovemaking wore on, there was less grace and more passion. Her lips pressed harder on his, their teeth clashed in their clumsy need to be closer, and he could hear that she long since stopped breathing – the breath still in her lungs struggling to be freed, held defiantly, as if to deny that each one must be given back. A swell built up within them and soon it crashed hard upon them in unison. She bit into his chest and scratched at his back. It seemed like agony, the way they looked at each other.

He slumped down onto her as they both gasped, ragged, their energies spent on this final instance of rapture. They whispered each other's names with soft promises following closely after and the heat on their breath was as torrid as a summer breeze; as they laid their bodies limply into each other, their hair matted on their faces, skin wet, like two bodies thrown from a river and cast upon the riverbanks.

He rolled off from on top of her, and she watched the rise and fall of his chest, laying next to her looking as if he was placed atop an altar like an offering. She ran her hands across his firmly muscled torso, and outward until she felt the sharp outline of his ribs. He had lost weight – not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for her – much of it from when he was lost in Mideel and his eyes were open but unseeing. She pressed her cheek against his chest as she drew herself closer, his arm wrapping around and enveloping her as if he knew to reassure her that she would never lose him again. She wrapped her arm around him and tangled her legs in his as if to tell him the same. 

“No one else can have you,” she said as she squeezed her arms tighter around him, “No one.”

“No one, I promise.”

“I promise, too.”

And in their hearts was a quiet understanding that no matter how much longer they had - whether it was simply the days before them or a hundred years after - all it would be is the time after the fullness of a moment when she could not doubt that he loved her and when he could not doubt that she loved him. The time from tonight into tomorrow was the yawning chasm like that on Mount Nibel where they both fell, but now they were consoled by the thought that this time they would fall together. For one full night - for the first time in a long time - they were filled only with what they felt for each other, and instead of the dark, they slept blanketed by the light of the moon.

The morning was silent. When the sun rose they bathed together, washing each others’ bodies to see the marks they had left behind. They stood in front of mirrors to fix their clothes so that they might look the part of heroes and to ensure that they would express the quiet dignity of the common folk they secretly were. They admired each other in their reflections as they stood next to each other. 

“Cloud.”

“Yeah?”

“You know how I feel, don't you?”

“I do… Do you?”

“Yeah. I do.” 

Tifa took him by the hand and laced her fingers in his still looking at their reflection. With a light squeeze, she called his attention and they looked one final time at the image of themselves together and then turned toward the doorway. 

They took their first steps that morning toward the coming days of horror acknowledging that they had no refuge now but each other, so perhaps in understanding this they were free to no longer be afraid. Their ceremonies in these days had been clandestine with their silent vows and the truths they found in the dark; and they quietly hoped they had given each other enough love to face the loveless world once more as they left their room on that empty airship overlooking a distant ocean, hand in hand on their last day in Paradise.


End file.
